Difficulties associated with identifying exterior siding (e.g., on a home or other building) has been a longstanding issue in the insurance industry, often leading to repair delays and/or unnecessary expenses. For example, if damaged siding on a home is misidentified the replacement siding ordered for the repair job—and in some cases, actually installed on the home—may not match the existing siding (e.g., in pattern, texture, color, etc.) to the satisfaction of the homeowner. As a result, the contractor may need to return the replacement siding (or if already installed, remove the replacement siding from the home), reattempt to identify the damaged siding, and order and install a new type of replacement siding, thus leading to project delays and lost revenues. If the product cannot be identified, all of the siding may have to be replaced, even if it is undamaged.
The process for identifying siding is often a laborious manual process. An insurance claim representative or adjuster typically visits the building having the damaged siding and obtains a physical sample of the siding, e.g., by removing a section of siding from the building itself, or by locating an uninstalled sample of the siding stored at the building. The personnel of the insurance company, may then visually compare the physical sample to various different types of physical samples or photographs of siding samples (e.g., from a variety of manufacturers) to locate siding that is visually similar to the siding to be replaced (e.g., a best available product). Alternatively, the claim representative or adjuster may take a photograph of the siding to be replaced, and then compare the photograph with various different physical samples or photographs of physical samples to identify a visual match. The claim representative or adjuster may also write down various attributes of the siding to be replaced, such as the material, style (e.g., Dutch lap, clapboard, etc.), face size, profile, and manufacturer (if known), in order to narrow the manual identification process.
The manual identification process can be very time-intensive, depending on the inventory of different samples or sample photographs available for comparison with the siding to be replaced. Further, it is inconvenient to manually search through hundreds of physical samples to identify the siding to be replaced.